Newport RFC

Once, they dominated Welsh rugby, defeating the greats of the game, from Bath to Australia and the All Blacks. Then, Newport RFC were removed from the game’s top table, eventually losing their home too. But, as they look to mark 150 years with the dawn of a new era, one thing remains the same, they ‘still hate those black and blue bastards’. 

Bath arrived at Rodney Parade expecting a comparatively straightforward Heineken Cup win. They were, after all, giants of England, admittedly going through a bit of a lean patch, but nonetheless memories of their European win of 1998 were fresh enough, and they’d only just finished second in the English Premiership, so they were still very much contenders. Within their ranks they had quality in every position, with England’s Matt Perry, Ade Adebayo, and Mike Tindall, and USA great Dan Lyle among their number. They were also coming to Newport off the back of a win against French side Castres. 

Newport, meanwhile, had no European pedigree to speak of, with not even a solitary win, let alone a title, to their name. 

At around the same time as Bath had been conquering Europe, Newport had been propping up the Welsh Premier Division table, but the scent of change was in the air, and all 11,432 who turned up for this floodlit clash on Friday 13 October, 2000, knew it too. Such was the match’s potential, not to mention the talent on the pitch for both sides, the bosses of both England and Wales, Clive Woodward and Graham Henry, were among the throng. 

The crowd needed to wait just six minutes for the first blood to be drawn by the home side, fly-half Shane Howarth and midfielder Andy Marinos combining to release Ireland’s Matt Mostyn who would feed Matthew Watkins for the first score. Just over ten minutes later, they scored a second, this time Mostyn finishing the job himself. Bath rallied through their own Welsh scrum-half Gareth Cooper, but Newport finished the half with a remarkable third try through Marinos: 22-10 at half-time. By full-time, little changed, 28-17 to the Black and Ambers, the iconic English rugby team despatched, and Newport chalked up a first European win. The good times were back.

In fairness, it wasn’t quite as big a surprise as the black and white scoreline suggests: this wasn’t a Newport side bereft of talent, it also included a couple of Springboks – captain Gary Teichmann and prop Adrian Garvey – within its ranks, not to mention Fijian lock Simon Raiwalui and Canadian Rod Snow. It was all part of a significant investment by Tony Brown, which would eventually reach £10m, to bring the glory days back to Rodney Parade, and the process was well under way. 

Newport’s Heineken Cup campaign rolled on to see them secure a win over Castres, before a crushing defeat at home to Munster, which included floodlight failure. They did, however, win one trophy that season, beating Neath 13-8 in the Welsh Principality Cup final in front of 20,000 (largely Newport) fans. Dreams of the league – they finished third – and European glory may have not come true, but at least there were still dreams to be had.

“By full time, it was 28-17 to the Black and Ambers, Bath were despatched, and Newport chalked up a first European win. The good times were back.”

A season later, the introduction of the Celtic League – the Irish sides joining the Welsh and Scottish who had banded together in 1999 – saw Newport competitive in a tough environment, still finishing higher than both Cardiff and Swansea. Another cup final in 2003, albeit ending in defeat to a strong Llanelli side, 32-9, proved to be the final hurrah for the club side as everyone knew it. 

Fears had long been growing that nine Welsh professional clubs was an unsustainable number, and the move to regional rugby seemed inevitable. Infamously, after much political wrangling, a five-region set-up was agreed, with Newport RFC joining Ebbw Vale to become Newport-Gwent Dragons, with fifty per cent shares apiece. 

After almost 130 years at the zenith of club rugby, Newport, along with other storied sides of the Welsh game such as Cardiff, Neath, Swansea, Bridgend and Llanelli, would effectively become semi-professional outfits, acting as feeder clubs for the new regional sides. 

Twenty-one years on, and the two former partner sides of the Newport-Gwent Dragons are facing each other in the semi-final of the Welsh Premiership. It’s a world away from that Friday night against Bath. Home today is Spytty Park, two miles south of Rodney Parade and the residence of third-tier football side Newport City. It’s here that Newport RFC now play the majority of their home games; instead of 11,000 passionate fans in their stands, there’s around 500, and on the pitch, rather than famed internationals, it’s mostly part-timers.

Once thing that remains the same, is that change is in the air for Welsh rugby. Another new premier domestic competition, Super Rygbi Cymru, is set to launch next season. Political wrangling has inevitably once again played its part, with established clubs including Neath, Pontypridd and Merthyr not included in the new ten-team league, but Newport are among the sides to secure a licence. “We’re positive about it,” says Mark Workman, Newport’s outgoing team manager and incoming chairman. 

‘Worky’ has been a Newport man in every guise: as a young fan growing up seven miles away in the village of Machen; as a player, making almost 300 appearances for the club; as part of the matchday staff for over a decade; and now as management, although he insists he’d rather still be in the dugout. “We applied for it because we want to be in it,” he says, “we want to be playing at the top end of Welsh rugby, whatever that looks like, but time will tell.”

They go into the era on the back of a successful period since head coach Ty Morris stepped up from forwards coach to the top job in 2019. In 2022, he took the club to their first Welsh Cup victory in 21 years, their first since the heights of the Tony Brown era, and in the league there has been success too, with the club rising from an eighth-place finish in his first season to consecutive top-four finishes. Today, they have given themselves a chance of going a step further – with a dominant display to beat Ebbw Vale 48-13, their fifteenth win on the bounce, they’ve set themselves up for a final against reigning champions Llandovery, who had finished one point ahead of Newport at the top of the regular season table.

Newport would go on to lose that final 14-7, but as the players bask in sun and celebration with the Newport faithful after the semi-final, such scenes are welcome at a club for whom such golden days are edging further into the past.  “What we have got now are boys that are proud to play for Newport,” continues Mark. “I think on the playing side of things, our relationship with the Dragons is now about right. We’ve got players in our team and in our coaching staff who also work for the Dragons, so there’s some consistency there. The communication is really good.”

Newport formally separated from their regional sibling in 2017, the Welsh Rugby Union taking full control of the Dragons due to concerns that both they and Newport were at risk of financial collapse. It was a move to save the Dragons and professional rugby in the Gwent region, but as part of the deal, Newport also lost their ownership of Rodney Parade, their home ground for over 140 years. It was there that a record 31,000 had crammed in to watch Newport face South Africa in 1952; where they’d famously beat the All Blacks in 1963; and where more than thirty British and Irish Lions had prowled in Black and Amber, seven of whom went on the 1910 tour to South Africa, still a record for a single club on a Lions tour. It was a devastating loss for the club, one that eventually forced their move to the smaller Spytty Park and consequently soured relations with the region.

However, while off-pitch challenges remain, relations today are strong when it comes to the on-pitch, a sign that good things are surely to come for Newport as Super Rygbi Cymru comes around the corner. “We had an issue previously where boys didn’t necessarily want to be there, they thought that it was a step down coming to play for Newport, but I think that mindset is changing,” says Mark, with his team manager hat on. “Now, the boys who get allocated to us from the Dragons are with us from the start, they play preseason games, they train with us twice a week, so it’s performance related – if they play well, they get picked up by the Dragons, rather than seeing it as a punishment coming down to us.

“We had an issue where boys didn’t want to be here, they thought it was a step down  to play for Newport, but that mindset is changing”

“They’ve been with us now three, four seasons, they get it. Boys like Joe Westwood and Che Hope, they might potentially start at the Dragons next season, but now they’re celebrating as much as anyone when we beat Ebbw Vale, and they’re feeling it as much as anyone when we lose to Llandovery.”

The dawn of yet another new age in Wales is timely for Newport RFC as they look to celebrate their years of past success with their 150th anniversary in September 2024. While Newport may have suffered all manner of bumps and bruises in the modern era, what can’t be taken away is a storied past. 

In September 1874, a meeting between nine men at Dock Road Brewery in Newport formed what was originally an association football club, but when they found a dearth of opposition in south Wales they converted to rugby, playing their first game against Glamorgan in April 1875 on the grounds now known as the Cardiff Arms Park. That game ended in a draw, but Newport had been born.  

From the very start, Newport became Wales’ premier club side, enjoying a 59-game invincible run across their first four years, and with such dominance, the club looked further afield for a side that could match them. “In 1879/80 season, Newport put a challenge down to Blackheath, who were the premier club in England at the time,” says Steve Bennett, Newport historian and lifelong supporter, who watched his first game as a twelve-year-old back in 1975. “They had a right tonking,” he laughs – scoring eight goals and four tries at Rodney Parade, and keeping the Welsh side scoreless, Blackheath gave Newport a stern lesson that while they might be the kings in Wales, they were far behind the standard being played across the Severn.

Such was the manner of that defeat, the game not only shaped the future of Newport, but the future of rugby in Wales altogether. “A man called Richard Mullock, who was secretary of the club at the time, he had the idea that not just Newport needed to improve, but that Wales needed to improve,” continues Steve. “There was a South Wales team [the South Wales Football Union had been formed in 1975], but they were only getting games against the north of England and some universities. So, he was the man behind the formation of the Welsh Rugby Union.” A year later Mullock would set in motion the first ever full international between Wales and England, and after a heavy defeat by seven goals, one dropped goal and six tries to nil, the WFU [Welsh Football Union, which would later become the WRU] was formed in 1881 with Newport as one of the eleven founding members. 

The following decade was one of steady improvement, and by the 1890s, Newport had entered their first golden era – between 1891 and 1897 they played 170 games and lost just thirteen. “In 1891/92 they had an invincible season, led by captain Tom Graham. They were the best team around, everywhere they went they were famous,” says Steve. “For many of those famous players playing for Newport at the time, their families originated from outside south Wales and came here during the industrial revolution. Arthur Gould for example, his father was a blacksmith in Oxfordshire.”

Considered the best player in Newport’s history, hence being so casually dropped into conversation by Steve, Arthur Gould is the most famous rugby player you probably haven’t heard of. Scoring two tries on debut at the age of sixteen in 1882, Arthur would go on to be Newport’s highest scorer in their 91/92 invincible season and score 37 tries in 24 games the season after, still the Newport record for tries in a season over 130 years later. He then became the club’s captain, losing just four out of 55 games under his leadership and won 27 caps for Wales. 

However, Arthur is most notable for plunging the Welsh game into crisis in 1897 when his testimonial, towards which many had donated, was deemed a violation of rugby union’s strict amateur code. The game went ahead despite protestations, and the WFU and Newport withdrew from the International Board as a result, leading to internationals against Wales being prohibited. The stand-off was only ended when Arthur agreed to retire early. 

As rugby emerged from the First World War, it was business as usual for Newport, achieving a sixth and, to date, final invincible season in 1922/23, and they were similarly strong after the Second World War. “The 60s was a famous period for Newport – we beat the All Blacks, we beat the Springboks, we drew with Australia – but if you have a look at the 50s, we had better players and far better results,” says Steve. “Malcolm Thomas, Bryn Meredith, Ken Jones, he won a silver medal at the Olympics [at the 1948 London Games for the 4x100 relay], there was a lot of good players there.”

Brian Jones, or ‘BJ’, who was a mainstay of the Newport side throughout the successes of the 50s and 60s, is still a key part of the club today as president and holds the honour of being just the second player to beat New Zealand, South Africa and Australia on Welsh soil. “Newport I would say, and it was said by many rugby writers at the time, were one of the two great rugby clubs in the world,” he says. “And they were twelve miles apart – they’re great rivals and great friends, and that was Newport and Cardiff. Newport were regularly playing in front of 8,000 at their matches, and when it came to matches against Cardiff you could have anything from 20- to 25,000.”

After finishing school in 1953, Brian had been made captain at Cwmcarn United before being recruited by Newport in the midst of an injury crisis in the three-quarters. “So, on my eighteenth birthday, I played for Newport United against Llanharan, and six games later I was playing at Rodney Parade and marking WPC Davies against Harlequins.

“We were defending the clubhouse end, and when the final whistle went, Dick jumps on my back and says, ‘you’ve done it you old bugger, you’ve done it’.”

“We managed to win that game,” he continues, “the captain of Newport that season was Ken Jones, but he wasn’t playing in that game, he was playing for Wales and scoring the try that beat the All Blacks at Cardiff, still the last time Wales beat them. Six games later, I was playing against those same All Blacks.”

Newport lost 11-6 on that occasion, Brian kicking a penalty goal, and he then became established in the side, playing in the centres alongside Wales internationals Malcolm Thomas and the ginger-haired genius Roy Burnett – “he was absolutely magic,” adds Brian.

After two seasons playing for Devonport Services while on national service in Plymouth, the prospect of playing another touring side, Australia, drew Brian back to Rodney Parade. “They asked me if I would travel home to play, so obviously I was delighted – we beat them 11-0,” he says. “I became captain from 1959, and in 1960 we played South Africa but lost 3-0, and whereas I’d had all the glory of kicking the penalty goal against the All Blacks, I missed three kicks at goal. 

“Newport played magnificently in that game,” he adds, “so much so that Dr Danie Craven [then president of South Africa RU] said, ‘you’ve restored my faith in Welsh rugby’. It’s one of my favourite memories.” Brian would have his revenge against the Springboks as part of the Barbarian side who beat them 11-0 in the same year.

Three years later, in 1963, Newport had their greatest day. The All Blacks were coming back to Rodney Parade, eleven years on from Brian’s first meeting with them. “I got a call from a Western Mail reporter a few days before the game and he said, ‘do you realise if you win on Wednesday, you will be only the second Welsh player to beat New Zealand, Australia and South Africa in Wales?’ I said, ‘no pressure then’. But the rest is history.”

Newport won 3-0, a drop goal from John ‘Dick’ Uzzell the difference as they became the third club side to beat the mighty All Blacks, joining the 1935 Swansea side and Cardiff in 1953. “Instead of coming with the ball, Dick turns back inside and makes one of the very few drop goals he’d ever done in his life,” remembers Brian. “We were defending the clubhouse end at the end of the game, and when the final whistle went Dick jumps on my back and says, ‘you’ve done it you old bugger, you’ve done it’.” 

Golden eras such as Brian’s came and went at Rodney Parade, but as with so many Welsh clubs, the start of professionalism was defining. The 1996/97 season saw the official introduction of professional contracts, and with it an immediate drain of talent away from the club – the Black and Ambers lost record points-scorer Gareth Rees to Wasps, with lock Kevin Moseley, hooker Andrew Peacock and scrum-half Mark Roderick heading to West Hartlepool. That season they finished sixth in the league, and the following season, with the Premier Division reduced to eight sides, Newport finished bottom of the log, failing to win a single game. A seventh-place finish in 1998/99 confirmed what was already clear: Newport were in decline.

“When professionalism came in, Newport didn’t spend any money they didn’t have,” says Steve, picking up the history again. “That meant we weren’t ever competing with the top sides, because as it was proved, they were spending money they never had. Llanelli, Neath, they were all bust.”

But then, to Newport’s great fortune, came the era of self-made office furniture businessman Tony Brown, and with him his star signings. In a flash, Newport went from struggling has-beens right back to the top of Welsh rugby. “But that was all gone by 2003 when the WRU came in and turned everything up on its head with the regions,” laments Steve. “The whole thing was botched up anyway.”

The finale came on 17 May 2003, a six thousand-strong crowd at Rodney Parade knew things would never be the same again. They had just watched Newport RFC beat Ebbw Vale 61-9, the biggest win of the season, but the knowledge that regional rugby was about to tear the Welsh game apart hung grimly in the air.

While regions were the answer for the WRU boardroom, any person on the ground could see the model in place simply didn’t fit with the deep parochialism that made Welsh rugby what it was. “If an Ebbw Vale person was speaking, they’d say the same: no way on earth would those two ever be together,” asserts Steve. “They tried to do it with Llanelli and Swansea, but they couldn’t get them to agree to that, and Cardiff refused to go with anyone. The Celtic Warriors team [which was liquidated after a season] was based in Bridgend, so everyone from Pontypridd boycotted it, it was a complete mess.

“It was pretty much forced on the clubs, I don’t think they had much choice because a lot of them, Pontypridd, Swansea, Ebbw Vale at the time were all bust. We had too many teams with not enough money. They had to bite the bullet, but the way the WRU went about it, it was never going to work.

“If an Ebbw Vale person was speaking they’d say the same: no way would Newport and Ebbw ever be together. Here in Wales, you hate the team from one mile up road, that’s Wales.”

“Here in Wales, you hate the team one mile up the road from you, that’s Wales,” he adds. “Our case in point, when the Dragons first started, Ebbw Vale were going to help run it. They sold seventeen season tickets. When they realised even their own people were going to boycott it, they handed their shares back to the union.”

Newport kept their fifty per cent of the region, but the club’s relegation to semi-pro feeder status was difficult to stomach for the Rodney Parade faithful. “At the time, it was devastating,” admits Steve. “I started watching the club in 1975, so for me a normal fixture list, we’d play Bristol, we’d play Gloucester, we’d play Leicester, we played all of them. Then when we set the leagues up in Wales, we started losing those fixtures, and when we came to the regions, we just lost everything.”

Winning the inaugural 2003/04 Welsh league title, Newport RFC took 27 wins from thirty games. It served as a proverbial two fingers to regional rugby, but with the stars now plying their trade at the Dragons, there was an inevitable drain on the supporter base – no longer was Newport the side you went to for premier rugby in Gwent, let alone in their own town, or even their own stadium. “Pre-regions I remember playing against Cardiff at Rodney Parade in front of 12 to 15,000,” says Mark. “Even though we weren’t that successful at that time, the grounds were packed. You go into the Teichmann era when we won the cup and you’re still getting big crowds. 

“In the early days of regions there was still that support, but now, post-regions, it has had an effect, we’re probably getting average gates of four to five hundred. In recent years, moving to Spytty has probably had an effect as well, it’s a little bit out of the town centre. 

“Back when we had a strong Newport team it meant a lot to people. It’s different now, but the die-hards still come. We took two or three buses down to Llandovery [for the league final]. What we have got is that hard-core of people who love the club.”

The impact of regional rugby has defined Newport’s story since the turn of the century, and the loss of Rodney Parade in 2017 in the effort to save the Dragons from financial ruin was the seminal moment of their recent history. “Newport was sacrificed to save the Dragons, simple as that,” asserts Steve. “Newport were the owners of the ground, as we had been since 1923 when we bought it. But the Dragons, which I didn’t know about despite God knows how many meetings, had been putting up the ground as a surety for their loans. So they had to sell the ground to the Welsh Rugby Union.”

It followed a vote by more than eighty per cent of the Newport RFC shareholders to hand over their assets – the WRU paid just £2.85 million, wiping off a £900,000 loan and giving the Black and Ambers a cash sum of £600,000, a bargain for the union by any standards. “It was severely undervalued at the time, but that was deemed the only package that was available to keep both entities alive,” reveals Mark. “There was certainly a period after that where we felt the Newport shareholders had turned everything over to keep the Dragons alive. For me, the Dragons owed their complete existence to that fact, that the shareholders had done that. But we were cast aside.”

After selling their prize asset to help save their regional neighbours, Newport were treated as second-class tenants in their own home. With the ground being shared between themselves, football side Newport County and the Dragons, the pitch suffered deterioration and drainage issues, and with Newport County requiring precedence as a Football League club and the Dragons being a professional outfit, Newport were slowly edged towards the exit door. Becoming ever more expensive and impractical, in October 2021 it was announced that Newport would play the majority of homes games away from Rodney Parade. They now play just twice a year at their historic home, with Spytty Park playing host to the rest of their matches.

“There was a real period of animosity between us and the Dragons,” says Mark. “It’s probably better now, certainly on the playing side, but we still only get allocated two games a year at what we deem as our home.

“We’ve been like nomads for the last couple of years. It’s been difficult, just trying to find somewhere to train, or doing things like our end of season presentation; we can’t have it at Rodney Parade because that’s booked, so we’re having it upstairs in a pub.

“Financially, it’s affected us significantly,” he admits. “We’ve got no method for raising funds: we’ve got no bar, we have to pay for functions, we have to pay for training sessions, hire a room for analysis, a changing room. And that’s twice a week, so that’s a significant cost. Plus stadium costs for games at Spytty – on those occasions when we don’t have a massive gate, our costs are more than our receipts.”

But beyond the practical concerns, Newport having to leave their home also left behind their legacy. “When I used to walk into Rodney Parade and go into the changing room you were just surrounded by history,” recalls Mark. “You’d go down in the bars after the game and you’d be talking to British Lions, Welsh internationals who all played for Newport and they’d tell you their stories. 

“Newport was sacrificed to save the Dragons, simple
as that. We were the owners of the ground, as we had been since 1923.”

“That was one of the unique features of Rodney Parade – you’d walk down from the clubhouse in and amongst the crowds on game days, and afterwards, especially if you had a good win, you’d be walking back up there through a hero’s welcome. That was all part of its special feeling.”

That clubhouse, condemned due to health and safety, is now about to be demolished, and the 140 years of Newport memorabilia it once held is tucked away in a lock-up in a builders’ yard, with no clubhouse to display them. 

“Before the shareholders had the vote on selling the ground, me and three or four others went into the clubhouse and just got everything out of there,” says Steve. “They were saying that if the shareholders had voted against it, padlocks would have gone on the gates. It’s in a safe place, it’s looked after, but obviously it’s not on show, nobody can see our caps, jerseys, photographs, trophies.”

For those whose associations with Newport have covered almost their entire lives, the 150th anniversary marks a chance to remind people of what the club means to so many. “The club has changed immensely, but I still have that same feeling going to games – I still hate those black and blue bastards,” chuckles Brian. “Over the years at Newport going back to 1953, there have been some fabulous players, too many to name, but also there’s always been a great friendship within the club that has lasted a lifetime. I’d like to think history will record that Newport RFC played an enormous part in so many people’s lives and gave them so much enjoyment.”

“Next year is a big opportunity for us to get our story out there,” says Mark. “Because of the people who are still about, because of those people who still remember it, we’re determined to keep our identity and that history alive in whatever way we can really. That’s why we’re still here – people who wouldn’t care as much would have given up years ago.

“I don’t think anyone else has been through the changes we have. There’s a joke I often tell: we weren’t very successful when I played in the 90s, I was there when the game went regional, I was there when we lost Rodney Parade to the WRU, I was there when we moved to Spytty – I’m a bit of a jinx really, they’re better off telling me to get lost.

“But here we are still, this year we nearly won the league.”

For Steve, despite all that has changed at Newport and all that might change in the future, nothing will stop him being pitch-side at every game. “I first started watching them when I was twelve. It’s harder not to go to a game, I think. It’s a way of life.”

Story by James Price

Pictures by  Nick Dawe

This extract was taken from issue 26 of Rugby.
To order the print journal, click here.